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Diana Tsakiris 09:51:47
All right. Well, good morning. Good afternoon, everybody. Um, I figured it was fitting to come on here on our Ask me anything session with Jeff Barnes and make sure I have my coffee since it’s early in the morning with you, Jeff. So that’s good coffee for everyone. All right, welcome fans and followers of angels investors network, we put together this segment here to ask me anything section. where basically, you can ask Jeff, anything that you want to know about how to make your business sellable, scalable, or investable. And we wanted you guys to get a better sense of new AI, n is, who Jeff is and what services we can provide. So first thing I’d like to do is this is our CEO, Jeff Barnes. He has an incredible backgrounds that we’re going to get to know a little bit about some of these questions are going to be personal, some are going to be business, most will be business, but we’ll throw some personal questions out and from time to time. Oh, I’m Diana, she Kerris VP of business development. So the you know, we’re all here to ask questions. So Jeff, to get this kicked off and started, you have an extremely extensive background in many different industries and doing many different things. And a lot of times people kind of say that you just do everything. But you don’t you specialize in certain areas. You’re not a generalist, you you’re you do have a core set of competencies that you work in, can you kind of share with us a little bit about your very background, but really what your core your core is, and what it is that you bring to the business world?

Jeff Barnes 09:54:04
Absolutely, then I’d be happy to. So yeah, I’ve done a lot of different things. I’ve worked in a lot of different businesses. I’ve been a consultant for a long time, I started my career in the US Navy. And the funny story about that is that growing up, all I wanted to do is play baseball, I love playing baseball, I was going to go play for the Dodgers, I want to do that my entire life. And then junior year of high school is on an all star team, we traveled internationally and I ended up ruining my arm, my shoulder couldn’t pitch anymore. never really got it back. So unfortunately, the baseball thing was over. But the other thing I was good at was being a mechanic. My dad taught me my grandpa taught me. And then of course, it’s a school, or lessons in school learned how to be an auto mechanic.

And so I joined the Navy, because I was like, You know what, I don’t know what I want to do with life. But I definitely do not want to be a mechanic for the rest of my life. So I’m gonna join the military, because I know that there’s so many different careers that you can get while you’re there. And that’s certainly a great opportunity. And what they do, they made me a mechanic. So luckily, they made me a mechanic on a submarine running a nuclear power plant. So I was working on the nuclear power plant, the turbines and so on. I’m gonna make this story relatively short, because it could go on forever. But long story short, while I was in the Navy, I worked on systems, the military is built on systems, processes and procedures, I got incredibly good at understanding processes, writing procedures, and working with systems. So since then, I have taken that same mentality and that same opportunity to the corporate world, where I work in fortune 500 companies at fortune 500 clients, and we would work in technology companies around the world, bring new technologies to big business. And that’s a lot easier said than done. Because if you think about any sort of startup or tech company, they’re not built for scale. Initially, they’re just trying to get an MVP going. They’re just trying to figure out how to make money with that idea that technology, my job was to turn that into a system, a process and then a procedure to scale it globally. So that’s really what I focus on is teaching entrepreneurs and business owners how to build a sellable business, you know, creating that Built to Sell mentality. And the way we do that is by instilling systems processes and procedures into their business, so that you’re not constantly the solo operator, the solo entrepreneur or the small business owner. Once you have a system process and procedure for almost everything in your business, it’s almost infinitely scalable. And that’s what we really focus on is how do you create a scalable business using these methodologies?

Diana Tsakiris 09:56:39
Beautiful, you answered so many questions there. But one thing I kind of like to get Now,

Jeff Barnes 09:56:44
I love this little zoom filters, because you can’t really see that well, but this is my book, you

Diana Tsakiris 09:56:48
can see it if you keep it closer to you, right here.

Jeff Barnes 09:56:51
It’s called all hands on deck, how does a US Navy Submariner structure systemize, and optimize for success. And it’s all about that, right? We ran a nuclear power plant and hundreds of feet below the surface, the water of the ocean, 1000s of miles miles from land, there’s no phoning a friend, if anything happens, you’re so well, you got to fix it die kind of thing. So learning how to operate systems, fix systems, build systems, manage them, manage and lead the teams that are running the systems and all of that. That’s really important, right? We had 18 year olds running nuclear power plants, I’d say we had the idea of how a system works and process following processing procedures down?

Diana Tsakiris 09:57:29
Well, you just answered a couple of the questions I had laid out in the asking them. And we’re gonna do a segment on one of these days here, where you get to talk a little bit more about your book, and we focus on your book, because we don’t want to, like kind of switch that all into everything. So just to kind of how important would you say, having an outline and mapped out? systems, processes and procedures, manual? or, or, you know, some type of thing? How important is that for business’s growth in success?

Jeff Barnes 09:58:05
Well, it depends on how big you want to get, right? I mean, if you want to be the one doing all the work in your business every single day, it’s not very important at all. But he said, That’s not scalable. So let’s instead focus on where we want to take businesses, we want them to be scalable, right? I’ve started and run businesses that have lost me hundreds of 1000s dollars or millions of dollars. And I started and run businesses that have made eight figures, and I’ve worked inside of, I’ve run a nine figure division, I’ve been involved in billion dollar companies. And the big difference between the billion dollar companies and the companies that are losing money or can never really get off the ground, are their systems, processes and procedures, right? Think about McDonald’s. Okay, you can go up to almost any McDonald’s in the world, not just in the country, or where you live. And there’s probably some pimply faced 17 year old kid who can barely even pass his classes in high school, able to make your order right 90% of the time, okay, maybe it’s not 100% I’m but 90% of the time, some 17 year old, who you wouldn’t trust, to even get dressed properly in the morning, is able to take care of the customers and make the art. And how’s that possible? Well, McDonald’s figured out what worked first and foremost, they figured out what do you know, they had the product they had the offer? They got all that done, right? So that’s important, you have to have that first. Once you have that, now, it’s the user experience once the customer want and where are they going to get out of that? So you have to map that out?

Then you have to figure Okay, what are the steps to make that happen? Everything from you know, the meat shows up Sunday and gets off the truck and goes in the freezer. So it stays frozen until it goes to the line and it gets good. And they get for beer, and then it gets put in the rack and then the customer gets it right? Well, there’s probably about 500 steps in between there. If me as the entrepreneur, the visionary says, You know what, I really just want you guys to make great burgers, and which I’m not going to claim the McDonald’s burger is great by any stretch, don’t miss misunderstand me, but they have a system down. I want you guys to make these burgers, I want you to make sure the customer gets them and make sure they get it right every single time. That’s me as the maybe the founder, the visionary, saying I know what I need to do. I know what needs to happen every step of the way. But how do I offload that to somebody else who’s maybe never worked in fast food or the burger industry or done any of that stuff, right?

As an entrepreneur, as a founder, as a as the leader in your business, as the CEO and your business, you can’t do all of the work. So the person who understands how to go from point A to point z, not just B but all the things in between needs to be able to map that out. So having a an employee handbook and procedural manuals and things like that is vitally important. But beyond that, you have to map it out in the very beginning. So you know what’s happening. You need to go back and constantly improve that, right? If you went to McDonald’s 510 1520 years ago, it looks very different than it does today, right? 20 years ago, several McDonald’s didn’t even have a drive thru. Now, mostly gals are having to drive through lanes, right, because they’re keeping up with demand. They didn’t have digital signage, they didn’t have digital board. So the processes and the procedures are constantly changing. The systems need to be adapted, and then you need to actually train people on how to use them. Right. On the nuclear power plant, we had 13 or so volumes of procedures to on how to run the nuclear power plant, how to start up the engineering mastery of a piece of equipment, on and on and on. Well, that doesn’t do me any good if it just sits in the manuals. We had to get trained.

We had to have a level of knowledge and understanding. And this is where most business owners fail. That’s a lot of work. And if you don’t do it, you don’t scale and When we go back to angel investors networking, what we do, we focus on creating scalable businesses by helping you implement the systems, processes and procedures that are going to help you grow. And why do we do that, because at the end of the day, your business is only as investable as the systems you’ve been implemented. And if you don’t do that, you’re not going to raise capital, banks are not going to like you too much. Because you’re not going to show that you can actually grow your business. The investors that you’re hoping are going to come in and do an m&a or an IPO with you are probably going to laugh at you because you don’t have a business until you have systems. You only have an idea. And maybe you have a lot of hard work. But until you have systems in place, you don’t actually have a business.

Diana Tsakiris 10:02:23
I got very good stuff. We keep throwing words around the word scalable. I kind of want to back up a little bit.

Unknown Speaker 10:02:29
And let’s you know, we were saying our three main areas, you know what we look about a scalable investable sellable, kind of break down to me what is scalable mean? What is investable mean? What is sellable mean? Give us a little detail. Start with scalable, please.

Jeff Barnes 10:02:43
Yeah, okay, so let’s use some examples to describe this. Let’s say that I’m a dentist, and I just got done with dental school and I want to go run my own practice. And I want to grow this business and make a lot of money. Well, as a dentist, I’m going to put some parameters, I’m willing to work nine to five, Monday to Friday, I’m not gonna work Saturday and Sunday, I’m not going to do 234 shifts, you know, as many as six as needed every day. But I’m just one person. So I can go out there and I can say, Okay, I put my sign on the door, I’ve done my marketing, I’m getting some clients coming in, and I figured out I’m going to be doing cleanings, I’m going to be doing x rays, and maybe I’ll do the occasional root canal. Let’s just say that. And I know that there are specialties for all this. But if I’m going to do all that, let’s say that every patient takes about 30 minutes. Okay? Beginning most self employed people. So they are don’t have a full book a full book of business, they don’t have a full schedule yet. But as they grow, they start to get that full schedule. So if I have 30 minute appointments, that means an eight hour day I can see 16 people. That means in a week, I can see what’s that 80 people in a week. But that’s my limit. That’s my upper limit. So I can’t grow that business beyond 80 people. problem with that is that now the business is also reliant on me. If I don’t come into work, no one else is going to take care of these patients, right? So now you hire people. Okay, so a dental practice can become scalable to a certain extent, because now I can bring somebody else and now I can have somebody else do the cleanings, right? I can have a dental assistant doing all the intake, I can have somebody else at the front desk handling all the paperwork and all the payments. But if the appointments are still 30 minutes, I’m limited by actual physical factors such as the number of seats, the number of chairs, the number of rooms in my building.

So even still, I’m only I have a finite scalability factor, meaning I can’t grow my dental practice beyond the limits and the constraints with in that physical space. So I might say, okay, what’s the next step? How do I grow this business to the next level? Well, the next thing is now I’ve got to get a whole new space, or I’ve got to expand. Okay, I’m scaling a little bit more. Now I have more seats, more chairs, more people I can hire. But here’s the challenge with all this. If you notice, every single step that we made to grow, our capacity, actually had an incremental cost increase as well. If I want to now go back and have another person coming in to help me with the cleaning. Maybe I can do more cleanings, but maybe I’m not the one doing them. But now I have to pay that person. Okay? If I want to expand my business, so I can have more rooms, I have to pay for a new lease, I have to pay for construction, I have to pay for the equipment, right? There’s an incremental cost increase every single time I try and scale. So in that case, those types of businesses are great, they can still scale, but they are not infinitely scalable. Versus you look at the technology sector. Okay, I’ll give another example of a company I worked with, and that company’s name was Audrey, Audrey was a predictive analytics company focused on rotating mechanical equipment, their job was to go out there and use vibrational analysis of rotating mechanical equipment, pumps and motors, to figure out if they’re gonna fail. Well, first, all they had was the hardware. Well, in order to have the hardware, you have to go manufacture the hardware, you have to have somebody that’s gonna build it for you.

To put it all together. Now the hardware is great. But now I have to go sell the hardware, which means any salesperson, I need a sales team. And then I of course need to keep manufacturing. So that’s scalable from a manufacturing perspective, but there is still an incremental cost increase. However, on the back end of what they did was created a software. And the software now can take inputs from their machines from their their tools. Now they’re still finite, Li scalable, because they have to manufacture and build all the hardware. But what if they instead say, you know what, we can actually install our software onto the backs of a bunch of different types of hardware. Now I have a software as a solution or software as a service and I can sell this service And there’s not going to be an incremental increase this dramatically bigger for selling a software versus hardware, I’m not gonna have to manufacture anymore equipment because somebody else is putting the equipment on the on the, or the machine the equipment on the machines and providing me with that input. So now my software is scalable. All I need is more servers, more cloud storage, but the the incremental cost increases minute. So when you look at this, the scalability factor of a business is how much more profit Can you bring in as the number of people comes up? And is there a ceiling on that, if you get to a point where I can’t do any more work, right, if me as an individual coach or consultant, I can’t do more than X number of people’s sessions per day. So that’s not scalable. But if you take my level of knowledge and put it into a training program, then we digitize that we sell that to a membership, that is infinitely scalable, right. So this is what we talked about, we talked about scalability, investors don’t want to invest in companies that aren’t scalable. Bankers don’t want to consider taking a risk and investment banker on trying to go to an IPO of a company is not infinitely scalable, right. So when you think about your business, you have to find a way to put that scalability factor in there. And there’s a lot of ways to do that. But we talked about monthly and annually recurring revenue, those types of models, when we start diving into them are what creates scalability. So hopefully that helps answer that question, Dana.

Unknown Speaker 10:08:10
So out of the three, um, you know, we started with scalability. And the reason we start I started with that one is one, we hear that term everywhere. And it’s always good to hear what some what, not just what someone’s definition is, but I love how you explained it, and you showed us how to scale. But if we’re looking at a business, and we’re looking to get an A capital raise, or we’re looking to sell it off, or take it to an IPO, how important would you say the scalability factor is is that the main area business owners should look at what what do you think’s, um, you know, is the best thing for capital raise? Is it that scalability?

Jeff Barnes 10:08:47
If you’re trying to raise capital, then absolutely right. Investors are, you know, whenever you create your use of funds, or use of proceeds to raise capital, you have to show investor what you’re going to use that money for. Because a lot of businesses actually don’t need to raise capital, they just need to get better at marketing and converting sales. And we help Of course, a lot with that. Because when you don’t need to raise money, and you can just get your money from your customers, then you can become scalable. But investors want to know, okay, what am I going to be putting my money into the to generate more money for me? And let’s just use the dentist As another example, if the dentist says, Hey, I need to go out there and raise $500,000. So I can build a new facility, then the investors who say, Okay, cool. So $500,000 is gonna get you what? Well, let’s just play this scenario out. Okay, I have my building a right now, that’s Jeremy generating me $1.5 million per year in revenue, and my profitability on that is about $200,000. So this $500,000, I’m gonna do over here, I assume within the next three to five years, I’m going to be hitting that same number, so 1.5 million in revenue and turn $1,000 in profits. So if an investor is going to write a $500,000, check, you’re gonna say, Okay, so I’m putting my money into this, you’re going to create a new facility. And I know that you’re going to generate profits, and I’m going to get paid back from those profits, right. And that’s an example of scaling of a business. So an investment might make sense. Now, of course, that depends on the internal rate of return, that the investor is going to get, what their benchmark and their criteria are, and so on. But the scalability factor of a business allows them to understand how they’re going to get their money back, and how soon if that for every $100,000, an investor puts in, you only make an additional $100,000? Well, that’s not $100,000 instantly in profit, and even if it is, doesn’t mean that the investor is gonna get all that back. Right. That’s it wants to know, for every dollar I put in, how much more money in profit Are you going to get? And how soon is that going to come back? And how is that going to come back to me as an individual or a company?

Unknown Speaker 10:10:44
Right, because an investor’s business is money, and they want to make more money. Okay, so here’s a question I get asked, as you know, your Vice President of Business Development probably. Okay. I mean, maybe I’m exaggerating, maybe I’m not but like 100 times a day. And that is, Are you an investor?

Jeff Barnes 10:11:08
Me as an investor or the company, the company? Okay. So I’ll answer both. So yes, I am an investor. Personally, I’ve invested in companies. Angel investors network does not make direct monetary capital investments into businesses. Okay. We are not an investment brokerage. We’re not an investment bank. We are not licensed. We’re not broker dealers. So as a company, we are a network. That’s why it’s called angel investors network. We build up a community of people that want to help entrepreneurs scale their businesses, and at times, that means those individuals will want to invest. So no We do not do direct investments into companies, we also do not take equity for services, right? A lot of companies will come to us to say, Okay, well, I just need help, if you can just help me, I’ll give you 10% of the company. I’ve done that in the past a number of times, and I will tell you that it is a it’s generally a losing proposition. And the reason why and I don’t mean to be rude or blunt to people, but a lot of the time, the people come to us that asked us for that, it’s because they don’t know how to build a business in the first place. And they haven’t learned the process of raising capital, they haven’t learned the process of generating a really good offer that they can actually sell, they haven’t learned how to do marketing, how to do advertising, they don’t know how to be a boss in a lot of times, right?

They don’t know how to build a team. And this is why they come to us. And they say, Well, if if I just give you 10% of your company, my company, which to be honest, 10% of nothing is still nothing. And since I haven’t generated anything yet, I’m not getting much from them. And then I have to go out there and implement the systems myself, I have to bring my team on to bring you on day. And now we have to go work and we’re essentially running their business, I don’t want to do that, right. I have my own businesses to run, I sit on boards of other companies, I consult with companies, and our time is very valuable. So we’re not going to take our team’s time to go build somebody else’s business. All right, we need to know that the people we’re working with have skin in the game, they’re going to be investing in themselves, right? Because if you don’t invest in yourself, why should anybody else invest in you, and they’re going to be willing to put in the hard work and the effort. So we have minimum criteria that we look at, before we even take on a client. And we definitely don’t do direct investment into companies. So maybe you can x era, you know, cut that trim that out somewhere you can put that on. So anytime anybody asks you, Hey, will you just write me a check, you can just take that sense of them and help them understand why we don’t do that. So that makes sense.

Unknown Speaker 10:13:41
Sorry about that brief little waving there. My, my son, he probably killed me if I turn the camera on him. But my son just popped up to say hi, and I’m, like, go away, go away. I’m in the middle of something. He just gives me this ominous Look, he’s six foot eight. So you got to be careful with you know, it’s finally bigger than me. But anyways, speaking of kids, let’s kind of jump a little personal. We’ve gotten so heavy on some business, you’ve given a lot of information. Now, I am going to ask for a couple of tips here and a little bit but two little boys, right? Tell us a little bit about being a dad and and an entrepreneur and share with the world your kids?

Jeff Barnes 10:14:19
Well, I have two boys, Bryce and Brody. They’re currently eight, almost eight and nine years old. And yeah, they’re just a ton of energy and a ton of fun. And I gotta tell you that raising boys, when you are an entrepreneur, and you travel a lot is challenging. So being in a committed that really good relationships important. Now, full disclosure, I got divorced, I’m remarried. And so there was a lot of ups and downs, raising those children, and you know, it’s a full time job in and of itself. So if you don’t have help, then you’re gonna have to find a way to work around that. Being an entrepreneur, being a business owner, being an investor myself, I have to set a lot of parameters on my time, because I want to be able to focus on them. So we use time blocking, you know, data, you schedule a lot of stuff on my calendar, and you look at you’re like, well, there’s just no room to put stuff on sometimes, right? Because I block things out. I have to be very diligent about that. Because otherwise, my sales team put stuff on my calendar. I’m like, Well, okay, I wanted to have a life. But I guess that’ll Wait, right? I’d rather

Unknown Speaker 10:15:25
you know, I need to focus on me wearing my job description. Did it say make sure Jeff has a life? You’re right, you’re absolutely. You know, we’re in there. It said, build business, business development, develop business.

Jeff Barnes 10:15:37
Exactly. Well, you know, that’s my job, right? That’s my responsibility. And you have to take ownership of that, as a parent as a spouse in a relationship doesn’t really matter. You can’t say we’ll put that off into the future. Because the one asset that we can never get back is our time, right? It’s the most scarce resource in the world, if you squander it. Now, if you use it effectively, it can be the greatest asset in your life. But when you squander it, you don’t use it properly, then it’s challenging. So, so Bryce, Bryce is very much one of those left brain kind of kids. He’s very Matter of fact, he likes things black and white. And he will argue with me he is going to be a lawyer. I have no doubt about it. He’s going to be an interrogator because he’s really good at asking hard questions. He’s gonna be like an FBI, FBI interrogator or hostage negotiator, maybe. And then they will maybe

Unknown Speaker 10:16:30
I should have Bryce do our next Ask me anything session. That could be Mattie’s at school.

Jeff Barnes 10:16:37
Yeah, he, he wants to be a police officer. I have a feeling he’ll be on the legal side of things because he’s just very much matter of fact. And then I have Brody, who’s If anybody has kids, I’m sure they can relate to this, even if they’re twins, but definitely if they’re separated by a couple years, like 180 degrees out. And Brody is my very much right brain, my creative thinker, my my kid that always has heads up and head up in the clouds. And, you know, you can’t get this guy had to do the same thing twice in a row the same way, he’s always got to be creative about something, he loves to dance, he loves to play both of them, he loves sports, that’s fine. And of course, they’re 18 months apart. So they fight nonstop. They’re best friends, one minute and worst enemies, the next and they come back together. So it’s a lot of fun. It’s a lot of energy, I coach their their baseball teams, I’ve coached football for them, I’ve coached basketball for them and all that. And of course, you know, running your own business. And doing that means you got to make time for both right? And so you got to block your time out appropriately.

Unknown Speaker 10:17:35
Definitely, you got that time blocking thing again, I’m sure we could probably do a whole Ask Jeff session on time blocking there. Okay, so let’s say this, let’s kind of talk a little bit about what angel investors network is looking for, and who we are. Not not that we don’t want to help everybody, but who were best suited to help. So, you know, I’m, let’s say, I am, you know, got a brand new idea. I’ve jotted it down in my notebook. And that’s where I’m at is that the clients? We want? What give me give me, give us a description of who you best can help make the most results because Time Time is precious, right? So we don’t want to have someone that we can’t help because now we’re wasting their time. And our time, we you know, there are coaches out there for different stages of businesses. So talk a little bit about who it is that, you know, you can get the most results for and help their business be scalable,

Jeff Barnes 10:18:43
right? So this is always a tricky question to answer, because people want to think that they’re at a stage where they can get help, and it’s going to be easy for them. And we’re going to make the most sense. And the fact is, that’s not true. VCs and angel investors, they like to put companies into different buckets on a timeline. So you might have the idea or napkin stage, right, this is I’m just getting started, I have a great idea, I really want to figure this out. And that’s where a lot of entrepreneurs stop, unfortunately, because they find out how hard it is. And this is also why they they try to raise capital right out of the gate, they say, Okay, I’ve got a great idea, if I can just raise 50,000 $100,000, I can go make this happen. That’s the wrong attitude to have. And that’s also an employee attitude, that is not a an entrepreneur mentality, that’s an employee mentality, because it’s, I need to get paid, before I go out there and produce anything. And we don’t want that.

So there’s the idea napkin stage, and then you put this on the timeline that’s like your, your pre seed round, right. So if you have ever heard these terms of pre seed seed series, a Series B seed and on that, that’s kind of what that means. Idea napkin stage, I’ve just written down the information, but I don’t have anything. I don’t have patents, I don’t have intellectual property, I haven’t developed an MVP, minimum viable product. I haven’t developed a prototype, I haven’t generated sales, I haven’t done anything, right, we can’t help those people. And the reason we can’t help those people, is simply because I can tell them what to do all day long. But they’re not going to be able to implement it without a team without some sort of systems without some sort of support. So as much as I like talking with those people, I can’t really help them. Because a lot of what they need to do right there is they need to go get to work. I’m not going to build their business for I can’t, I’m not going to create the next widget, I’m not going to create the next top technology, right? I am a technologist but I’m not a developer, I’m not a coder, I’m not someone’s gonna be able to help them figure out what’s wrong with their technology. I’m the guy it’s like, cool. Now that your technology is kind of built, we have an idea of what it can do.

Can I do this can do this, can we add this in here? And here’s how we make money with it. And here’s the industries that I would work with. Right. So the idea napkin stage is too early for us. And that would also dive right into like your pre seed. So when we talk about your pre seed seed series A that’s what we’re talking about raising capital. So right after your idea napkin stage, people will say, Okay, well now I want to go raise some money, because I need money to hire a developer, I need money to go build a prototype and I still can’t help those pre seed people. Because as of yet they have not proven that they have a product or a service that’s actually going to scale or help people. They have an idea. And yeah, they’re trying to test their idea but they still have an idea.

This is where you go You learn the Lean Startup methodology, you go read the book called The mom test. And you figure out what you need to do to be scrappy as an entrepreneur to go out there and validate an idea or product. And once you validated an idea or product, the way you do that is by getting money, you can get money through customers, or you can raise some money from friends and family. We call the friends family and fools round, right? And these are the people that love you trust you are willing to invest in you, even though they are pretty sure they’re not going to get their money back. Right? If somebody can’t raise money from their friends or family, then they are not going to be a good fit for us. Because it means their friends and family are not willing to take a risk on them. And people will say, Well, I don’t know anybody with any money. I guarantee you, right? Most people that have money, don’t talk about they, they don’t want everybody to know how much they have in their bank accounts. I like some we walk around we we show on you know, we don’t wear it. Honestly, we don’t have a badge and says how big our nest egg is nothing like that, right? So there are plenty of people that have money. And that money may be tied up in a house, right?

So if let’s just say for example, you have a great idea, and you are willing to go out there and raise money for it. And this is going to be what you do for the next several years. And you go and you talk to your parents or your your brother, your sister who has equity in their house, say Listen, I was incredible idea. I know that you don’t have a lot of cash, but you have equity in your home, would it be possible to take some money out of that, if they’re gonna tell you no, which honestly, they should for the first 10 times, then there’s a reason for that. It may be that they don’t trust the idea, they don’t trust the product, or they don’t believe that you can make pull it off. And I will tell you that most people the first time they do this, and I did this right. I didn’t have any money when I was getting started. So I was asking my family to invest in me. And they told me no, and it hurt a lot. But then eventually, I started making progress. And I start making things happen, I started showing results.

Now people want to start investing in me. And that’s at that stage after somebody is invested in you. And you start building a little bit of a business. That’s when we can kind of come in and we can start giving you some coaching and some training as to what to do. But our ideal customer to answer your question, Diana, is that company that’s late seed round meeting, they’ve raised a few $100,000, maybe a few million dollars, they’ve invested a lot of money and time and energy into their own product, they’ve actually built a business, they’ve incorporated in some way, they have a cap table, they’re you know, they have actual accounting and books going on. They have systems that they’re using, but maybe their systems aren’t working properly. And they don’t know what they’re doing yet. They don’t know how to go from where they are to maybe they’re making $100,000 a year or $100,000 a month. But they want to go to 10x that they want to go to a million a month or 10 million a month or you know, even $100 million a month at some point. And they don’t know how to get there. That’s where we come in, right. So we’re kind of in that late seed series a round where they’re raising a few million dollars, they’ve already proven the concept. They’ve already tested it, they’ve gotten whatever intellectual property patents trademarks copyrights done that they need to. And now they’re looking for a way to scale their business up. And the reason that we come in at that stage is because now the investors that we’re working with the angel investors who don’t know them from Adam, can say, I’m not investing in just the person because I don’t know the person. Now I’m investing in a system that’s going to make money. And that’s the big difference between what we do and all the other companies out there that are just helping people get started. There’s so many training opportunities that just get started. But you’ve got to prove your grit before you get to angel investors. So hopefully that makes sense. Makes sense. And it helps us protect our investors as well.

Unknown Speaker 10:25:22
You know, it makes a lot of sense. It’s one of it is one of the hardest questions that Pete or a lot of people think it’s one of the hardest questions. And I think that’s because nobody wants to like, make anyone feel like they’re being turned away. But there are different levels and and everything right? So if if I say hey, I want to go and get super fit, and become you know, be able to go in and be on the stage and go to fitness constant contest and, and show off my physique. But, you know, I’m 100 pounds overweight, I can’t remember the last time I worked out, you know, I I’m not going to show up and go right to you know, Arnold Schwarzenegger and say, Hey, teach me how to build muscle, right? I got to start somewhere. I got to start, you know, maybe walking every day and build up to that. And I have to find the right you know, person that can train a beginner and the field and no one would think anything poorly about that, you know, like you wouldn’t say Oh, okay, I’m not going to go right to CrossFit. CrossFit is gonna kill me. I’m going to start you know, maybe at Planet Fitness or you know, you’re the YMCA or something to do someone wrote water aerobics and, and find the class that works best for me. Same thing with if, you know, I’ll talk about cooking because that’s, you know, one of my areas but if I’m going to learn how to cook I’m Not going to go to court on blue for my first cooking class, right, I’m going to start out, I’m going to watch some YouTube videos I’m going to build up, there’s different coaches for different areas. And it’s more detrimental to go to the wrong coach at the wrong time than it is too hard to tell someone, hey, look, this is where my expertise are, this is where I can help you best. Right, you know, you know, we have different levels. So that’s, I love how you put that out there,

Jeff Barnes 10:27:15
that’s really important to to and to understand that, you know, I, I’m not a great coach for somebody who just has an idea, because now that I don’t love those people, I want them to succeed. They’re not ready for the level of information, I’m going to give them plain and simple. And just like somebody is hard for me to help somebody who’s never raised money before, because they don’t know what they’re getting into. They have no clue what they’re about to get into raising capital is one of the hardest things to do out there. All right, it’s you don’t need to have as many people to raise to make a million dollars raising capital as you do make your million dollars selling stuff. But it’s challenging because you’re selling something different. And, you know, for me as an individual, when I work with somebody one on one, my job really is to get them out of their own way. Right? If we’re going to really break down who can Jeff Barnes out, I help the people who are standing in their own way of their own success, meaning that they have a great product, they have a great idea. They have a great business model. But they’re still wearing all the hats. They’re still making their accounting, they’re still doing their own sales calls, they’re still doing their own marketing, they’re still the guy that’s writing the code or developing the technology. You think about where Microsoft would be today, if Bill Gates was still the one doing all the programming, right? It wouldn’t be what it is. Same thing with Apple. Same thing with Google, like you look at every company that scaled up, each person who started had to get out of their way, the faster we can get you out of your own way, the better off your chances are of scaling and succeeding. And right, really, we’re my specialty comes as how do we get you out of your own way quickly?

Unknown Speaker 10:29:02
Alright, perfect. That’s, you know, and that’s, that’s a great thing. And it almost the I think it even answers, you know, I also hear besides that, you know, are you investors, and we clear that up? Besides that question. The other thing I hear a lot, and I see a lot when I’m in, you know, social media, or even just chit chatting with people that I know that are entrepreneurs. One of the things I always hear is, how much work and time and energy they put in their business, and how little time and energy they have. For family, friends vacation. I mean, the American Dream is, you know, to be able to have that lifestyle, right? Most people want you you want to have that freedom, where like you said, where you block off time on your schedule, you get to take your kids to school, you get to do these things. But I always am constantly hearing from entrepreneurs, or business owners or self employed. We’ll call them self employed. People out there that talk about how many things are missing in life, because business is taking so much of their time. And it’s like they’re on the proverbial hamster wheel and they just can’t stop. What is that the type of getting your own way that you’re looking for kind of expand on how do you relieve some of some of that?

Jeff Barnes 10:30:28
So I’m actually going to share this and hopefully this actually shares over to our, our Facebook friends because you brought something up Diana that’s really important. And this is Robert Kiyosaki is cashflow quadrant, let’s see. Employee Self Employed. business owner,

Unknown Speaker 10:30:48
I will tell you, the more you do this, the better your your virtual drawing is getting. It’s a little bit better.

Jeff Barnes 10:30:56
Right? You know, I’m still Yeah,

Unknown Speaker 10:30:57
you’re getting better and better all your your he was amazing. I was you know, nice, had really long and stretched out.

Jeff Barnes 10:31:05
Here we go. Okay, so here’s what happens. Most people, 90 plus percent of the population is right here, their employees, meaning they have a fixed mindset that says, Listen, I want to be able to go to work. I’m okay with making a set dollar amount. I’m totally fine with that. And I want to know that when I leave, I can leave work. I don’t have to take it home with me. I don’t have to worry about it overnight. I’m not thinking about it on the weekends, I know that I can do my job. Everybody’s happy with me doing my job and then I can leave. Okay, nothing wrong with that mentality. That’s just where most people are. That’s also how most people have been trained if they went through the traditional school system. You know, right, memorize and regurgitate, right. That’s kind of what employees, then there’s these people, these weirdos that say, you know what, I know how to do something, I’m gonna turn this into my own business, I’m gonna go become self employed. And they ended up in this little box right here, they go ahead and say, Okay, I want to be self employed, and I want to be the master of my own destiny, I want to be in charge of where I’m going in life. Well, the problem with being self employed for most people is going back to what we said earlier, which is that these people right here, I mean, make sure I can do a little circle these guys right here are, unfortunately, they have to be at work every single day. If they’re not at work every single day. They don’t make money. Right? They are the technician. This is the E myth. Michael Gerber’s e myth idea. I know how to be a great auto mechanic, so I’m gonna start my own auto mechanic business. Wonderful. Who’s gonna work on the cars? I am, okay, who’s going to sell the clients? I am who’s gonna do the books I am, who’s gonna make sure that we do the marketing? Well, I am. So you started seeing we have like 15 hats that all of a sudden we’re wearing as self employed. And the challenge with this is that when you’re self employed, you run out of hours in the day, very quickly. And so you can’t scale your business. So if you want to go back to what you’re asking earlier, which is who can we really help Well, guess what we can help the people that are going from here to up here, once I figured out how to actually make a stamp, I don’t want that. Anyway, you get the idea. We are taking the people who are going from being self employed or just starting out and becoming business owners. And the idea is that when we do that, they are now learning this process of scaling out a team. They’re learning how to be the leader of their business, not just the doer of their business. And if we do this correctly, then what happens is they can scale back there day to day involvement, and they can scale back the amount of things that they’re doing. And what we want to do from there is of course, if we take these people and they do it, right, we move them from business owner to investor, okay, now, it is possible to make the lump the leap from entrepreneur over to business owner. And this is the the thing that a lot of people really try to do when they go out there and raise a lot of money through VCs and try to go straight into raising capital, you can absolutely do that. But I’m gonna tell you that you’re still gonna spend a very short period of time as self employed person because you don’t know all the systems you need, you don’t know all the teams you need, you don’t know all the processes you need to build yet. Whereas what we can do is we can help you figure out okay, what are the things you need to do? So you can reduce your involvement, build a real business? Which The best way to think about this is, if you were to take a 90 day vacation, would your business still survive? Would it be doing less revenue? Or would it be doing more revenue? Or would it be gone completely if it’s gone completely after 90 days, meaning you have to restart everything after 90 days of you being there and rehire all the employees, guess what you’re right here. If you can leave after 90 days, and your businesses running better than when you’ve when you left your business owner. If you can leave way more than 90 days, and your business still making money and still making profits, guess what, you become an investor, okay. And this is really what we help people do is move from this left side of the quadrant over to the right side. And ideally, we want them down there, we want them to be these people. Because here, your money is making money for you, which means you’re not even doing the work anymore. Your Benjamins are going to work for you all those George Washington’s are becoming your greatest, greatest employees. And they’re going out there and doing the work and making you more money. That’s kind of the secret sauce if you want to talk about that, of how you reduce your investment and reduce your day to day. So hopefully that helps and answers that question for you.

Unknown Speaker 10:35:26
Oh, that was a great way to demonstrate that in your, you know, drawing, this quadrant is getting so much fancier and fancier I can’t wait to see what it looks like next time. Okay, so we’ve got about 15 minutes left. I, one of the things I like to make sure that we always do and we are providing value because they’re getting to know you, they’re learning more about what we do. So, you know, our, our clients out there and our potential clients, you know, are able to say, Okay, look, I really want to go work with Jeff at Angel investors network. I like what he’s talking about, but you know, I’m over here, you know, I’m not ready, I’m still on the napkin idea. are, you know, I’m not I haven’t started raise capital or whatever. But I want to that, which is great value there. But I’d like to give them something of a little bit more value. Can you give, you know, in this last few minutes, but you know, before we wrap up and end this last, maybe let’s spend maybe, you know, five to 10 minutes. What is one thing that a business owner can do right now that you can give them one tip that they should implement into their business, or that they can try to you know, that they’ll get some results off of or something that Something that you can tell them without doubt one thing here, hey, if you guys go out and do this and kind of break it down, explain why they should do it. Um, you know, like I said, spend about no more than 10 minutes. Yep,

Jeff Barnes 10:36:55
I can definitely do that. I can do that in one sentence, but it also depends on where they are in business, right? If you’re just starting out and you have an idea, don’t go out and ask somebody, if they buy something from me. That’s the dumbest thing you can do. Because of course, especially if their friends or family say Yeah, sure. Why not? And because the next thing you’d have to do is okay, cool. I have it, here it is, then they’re gonna say no, right? So asking somebody if they buy something is not a good idea. If you’re just starting out. So I’ll do two different scenarios, one, just starting out, just have an idea. Versus number two, I’m running a business and I have customers. Perfect. Number one is, you need to go out there and find the problem. So let’s say for example, and we talked about my kids, one of the biggest challenges I have, as a father getting my kids right in the morning, when my wife’s not around is getting them out the door on time fully fed, fully clothed, you know, brush their teeth, brush their hair, you know, got their lunches, ready, all that. So there’s a lot of things, but it’s getting out the door on time without waking them up even earlier, where they become cranky. So let’s just say I have to have them out of bed by 7am. And that’s going to happen I have to be outdoor by 8am. So half an hour for them to breakfast, cleaned up, dressed gone. And you want to solve this problem, because you’re finding out there’s a lot of little things are causing this. And for me, if I was there and watch it, I say you know, the biggest challenges out of this whole process, there’s a lot of things out them. The number one challenge is my kids take forever to eat breakfast. Okay, well, why is that? Well, I don’t want them to just eat junk food in the morning, I’m not just gonna give them Cocoa Puffs and call it good. I want them to actually eat healthy food, which means I have to prepare the healthy food. Okay, so now we’re getting granular on the problem. That’s what I was saying. Most entrepreneurs Miss is getting so granular on the problem to figure out okay, what is it? So okay, I want my kids to eat healthy food, and they’re taking a long time to eat healthy food, it’s also taking me a long time to make the healthy food. What can we do to solve this problem? Well, let’s find something that the kids want to eat. It’s also healthy. So there’s that, then if we can find something the kids want to eat, that’s healthy, that doesn’t really require a lot of time to prepare, also good. And we also need to make sure that we’re doing this in our own homes, we’re not going to go to McDonald’s and get drive thru, we’re not going to go to Starbucks and get drive that we’re gonna do on our own. Now I’ve identified a problem, I have identified the problem on a granular level, granular, granular level, and now I know exactly the problem I want to solve. Most entrepreneurs do not get that granular on that problem. And as a result, they also don’t know who their customers are, they don’t know who their early adopters are going to be. They don’t know who their early majority is. And they can’t articulate the problem very well. Whereas I just came up with this, just ask us this question than if I said, guess what parents, I have a completely organic, healthy, sustainable meal that you can give, doesn’t require it to be in the microwave, and kids love it. Nine out of 10 kids absolutely love this, and they’re gonna gobble it up, they’re gonna be done with breakfast before you can even turn your back away.

Got my attention, love to find out about this, right? So that’s one exactly right. And that’s just an example of I got so clear on what the problem was and what the pain point was in that problem. But now I can articulate and I can find a solution. Most entrepreneurs start solution focused, the absolute wrong thing to do. Okay, so that’s, for anybody who’s a startup, start with a problem, start with the pain and figure out how to solve that don’t start with a solution. So the solution here is losing everybody right off the bat. For an existing business owner, you are an existing business owner, you’re providing a product to your customers and your service to your customers. And you have customers on a regular basis, the number one thing that you can do to increase the scalability of your business is increase your net promoter score. And the Net Promoter Score doesn’t. It doesn’t look at your internal operations. It doesn’t look at how good you are at doing marketing. It doesn’t look at how good you are at doing your financial operations or managing your teams are leading people or being visionary or coming out with new products and ideas has nothing to do that. Your Net Promoter Score has been proven to be one of the most effective ways to figure out if we’re going to be able to scale a business up or not, and beat the the competition out. And it’s just one question. You go to your customers, you have to ask them, how likely are you to recommend our business to other people. And you’d be surprised how abysmal most people will score that score on a scale of one to 10. Okay, and we have a formula and a way that we can actually do that we can work with people, we actually create those surveys for them so they can send it out so they don’t have to figure it out themselves. And we can do that all with with our systems and help them figure this out. And what we found not now we Mimi but the studies have found that the net promoter score is the single one thing that we can do. That takes 10 seconds with our customers, and allows us to figure out if we’re going to grow, if we’re gonna stay flat, or if we’re going to decline, it’s the easiest thing we can do. they’ve proven it companies like Google, Apple, Nike, Under Armour, you know, these companies rate really high on the Net Promoter Score index. Anything over 50% is pretty stinking good. Unfortunately, most people don’t rate that high. Because you have people at the high end, the nines and 10s that love it. I’m absolutely I’m already recommending it to everyone. But then you have a whole bunch of people that are under five. And those people detract from the growth of your business. Right, you find out that they’re detracting from the growth of the business, the very next thing to do is figure out why. What is causing that. It could literally be if you’re a small business, it could literally be you guys don’t ever answer the phone call phone, when I call. If you’re a chiropractor, if your dentist and people have to call you up to schedule and I like I love coming in, but I can never get in because your lines always busy. I can’t schedule online, I always forget to go, guess what, change that one little thing, change that system that process that procedure? You’re gonna solve that, then they’re gonna find the next problem. Oh, well, your front desk person is really rude. Oh, okay. Right. But you have to start with a benchmark, which is how likely are you to recommend our business other people. If they say no or not, or not very likely at all, then you need to figure out why. So that took about six minutes took a little bit longer. But that’s for two different scenarios. Those are the two most important things I can think of to help people get to from where they are to where they want to be faster. I love that

Unknown Speaker 10:43:20
military background. Six minutes a little bit. So precise. It’s kind of funny that it’s just kind of as I was talking to my dad last night, just to kind of wrap this up, and we’ll go there. And he was listening to one of our brainstorming sessions. And he was kind of like, you guys are like the perfect match. And I’m like, yeah, we kind of are just military background helps. He’s like, it helps keep you in line because you’re like, all over the place. And Jeff is like, Well, you know, we’ve got a timestamp this kind of get out of there. Gotta get out of the submarine and the nuclear plant alive ones, what are we doing Diana?

Jeff Barnes 10:43:56
stuff done? You know, we can’t grow a business if we’re just goofing off all the time. But yeah, I know, it works out pretty well.

Unknown Speaker 10:44:03
It works out well, which is one of the great things. So just kind of wrap up what you just said, you know, for for all of us out there that all of you guys out there that are in that beginning stage, and you’re looking to say that you really want to jump into the entrepreneurial world. And everyone’s talking about it so much right now with everything that’s going on in the world, become an entrepreneur, become an entrepreneur, find that pain point, find the problem, figure out the solution for the problem, but really take it down to that deepest granular level, what is the real real problem, not just what do we think the problem is dig, dig, dig to make sure you get to the bottom, define that and work from that way to find the solutions. Don’t start with a solution, find the problem first so that you know what you’re really actually solving. For those of you that are in existing business and looking to grow and you’re just not growing or you want to know what the best way to grow is. You know, do your net, when Net Promoter Score, net promoter score in my brain stop? Look at that, how likely are you to recommend it? It’s a scary question. I know I asked it for all of our clients. And I asked it multiple times for all when when we start working with our clients, how likely are you recommended? I just asked this morning. So one of our clients and luckily for for me, it came back positive. Yes, I’m very, very likely to recommend you would you like me to write a review for you? Like I didn’t even have to ask I like yes, please write me a review. But you know, that’s that’s what you want to hear every time but you know, you have to be prepared to hear hear that? Well, I’m not real sure. I you know, well, what did you like, you’ve got to dig, find out, find out what’s keeping your clients happy? What’s keeping them paying your existing clients are your best clients. And then before we wrap this up, you know, there’s a couple of ways for you guys that are business owners. And you’re wondering, where do you fall? What do we you know, what are we doing? Where are we are at, I really do want to scale, I feel like I’m on that hamster wheel, I’m producing an income, we’ve got a couple of things we’ll put in the comment sections on how you can get in touch with us. Um, you know, we’ve got a couple of quizzes or questionnaires that you can take for those of you but kind of break down before we get off of here, not just on the quizzes and things that they can take. We’ll make sure the contact information by email addresses in the comments so that people can reach out the website and go from there for those that want to see if they they’re ready to take some of the entry level quizzes to see where they fall to see if they are fit for us a ton of helps us do that. Tell us describe for us real quickly. Jeff, what are the three? What are the How can we help these clients out? What services do we have to offer?

Jeff Barnes 10:46:46
Oh, boy, that’s a lot of fun. Okay, so really what we do is we focus a lot on the coaching and the training, right? So we really help people get grants. And then we have business evaluation tools that help you figure out how valuable your business is today. And then we increase the score. So I can go on and on about this for a long time. But we create a business that is an asset. So it’s built to sell, it’s built to invest in it’s built to scale. All right. And what we do is we walk you through an entire process. Over the course of several months, it’s not just like a one call, and we figured out your entire business, I’m all know, there’s a lot of things that go into that. So really, our goal is to help you create a built to scale business that investors want to invest in, that you can exit, if you want to that you can step up to the chairman if you want to. Right, that’s what we want to do. And our goal is to get you there quickly, we do that through a combination of our training or group coaching in our one on one programs. And that’s the easiest way to look at it.

Unknown Speaker 10:47:43
Perfect. So just for you guys out there, we have different levels, that you guys can come on board, depending on what your best learning style is, how where you are, and how much you know what you’re looking to do. We do have, you know, a group session, we do have one on one calls with Jeff. And the best way to figure that out, like I said, is when we put the links out there is to start with, you know, our entry level assessment, email over to me We’ll get we’ll go back and forth, decide if you know, if it’s worth your time to get on the phone call with me and spend some time chatting. And then we’ll you know, kind of go from there. It’s not something that we can just, there’s not a one size fit all for this guys. So there is going to be some back and forth questions and know that we will be doing this weekly, at 9am PST or noon. Eastern Standard Time, so it’s either coffee with Jeff or lunch with Diana for breakfast with Jeff lunches, Diana, maybe that’s what we need to change it instead to ask me anything breakfast and lunch, but breakfast and lunch time and go from there. And you can submit your questions, you know, through through the links on here on the Facebook page, get them over to us before our Thursdays so that we can address what it is that we want to you want to hear. Let us know how you you know feedback from today. What you like we you know, I do ask the hard questions. I don’t want to hear the hard answers. But I we need to hear them. So let us know how you like the content that we’ve had so far, and what content you want to hear from there. And Jeff, do you have anything you want to wrap up for the last three minutes, I don’t know, maybe tell us your favorite color or what color your eyes really are

Jeff Barnes 10:49:23
on I don’t really want I want to get I got a call with a client here in a few minutes. And we’re gonna wrap it up right now and get ready for that take a break in between go grab some more coffee, because I got to fill that back up. But now thanks for everybody being here. I went ahead and put a link in the chat there and in comments or in Facebook. So you guys can click on that you can actually get a free book. When you go over to that page. And if you download that book, then it’s going to talk to you about your freedom point. How do you create freedom from your business or in your business and the free stuff? Absolutely. So head on over there and download that for free but thanks that I really appreciate everybody being here and you guys have yourself a great day and a great weekend.

Unknown Speaker 10:50:06
All right, here’s looking to be scalable investable and sellable. Talk to you guys later. Yeah. All right. Live Stream is done.